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The Baby-Sitters Club Super Mystery #1
Baby-sitters' Haunted House
Visiting a huge seaside mansion in Maine while caring for six young charges, Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne, and Dawn are disturbed at the location's decidedly spooky nature and further alarmed by strange noises and a ghostly figure.
264 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1995
75 people are currently reading
469 people want to read
About the author
Ann M. Martin
1,102 books3,047 followersAnn Matthews Martin was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane. After graduating from Smith College, Ann became a teacher and then an editor of children's books. She's now a full-time writer.
Ann gets the ideas for her books from many different places. Some are based on personal experiences, while others are based on childhood memories and feelings. Many are written about contemporary problems or events. All of Ann's characters, even the members of the Baby-sitters Club, are made up. But many of her characters are based on real people. Sometimes Ann names her characters after people she knows, and other times she simply chooses names that she likes.
Ann has always enjoyed writing. Even before she was old enough to write, she would dictate stories to her mother to write down for her. Some of her favorite authors at that time were Lewis Carroll, P. L. Travers, Hugh Lofting, Astrid Lindgren, and Roald Dahl. They inspired her to become a writer herself.
Since ending the BSC series in 2000, Ann’s writing has concentrated on single novels, many of which are set in the 1960s.
After living in New York City for many years, Ann moved to the Hudson Valley in upstate New York where she now lives with her dog, Sadie, and her cats, Gussie, Willy and Woody. Her hobbies are reading, sewing, and needlework. Her favorite thing to do is to make clothes for children.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/annmma...
Ann gets the ideas for her books from many different places. Some are based on personal experiences, while others are based on childhood memories and feelings. Many are written about contemporary problems or events. All of Ann's characters, even the members of the Baby-sitters Club, are made up. But many of her characters are based on real people. Sometimes Ann names her characters after people she knows, and other times she simply chooses names that she likes.
Ann has always enjoyed writing. Even before she was old enough to write, she would dictate stories to her mother to write down for her. Some of her favorite authors at that time were Lewis Carroll, P. L. Travers, Hugh Lofting, Astrid Lindgren, and Roald Dahl. They inspired her to become a writer herself.
Since ending the BSC series in 2000, Ann’s writing has concentrated on single novels, many of which are set in the 1960s.
After living in New York City for many years, Ann moved to the Hudson Valley in upstate New York where she now lives with her dog, Sadie, and her cats, Gussie, Willy and Woody. Her hobbies are reading, sewing, and needlework. Her favorite thing to do is to make clothes for children.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/annmma...
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May 24, 2017
sorry guys, but this is one of my favorites, so this is gonna be a LONG review. in this first ever super mystery by ghostwriter Jeanne Betancourt, four of the babysitters (claud, kristy, dawn, and mary anne) go on a trip with karen and andrew's mom and husband (lisa and seth engle) to the sleepy seaside town of reese, maine. the engles have friends, the menderses, who have just inherited a mansion in reese and are considering moving there from boston. they have four kids, and the babysitters are along to help out with them and with karen and andrew (the engles had only wanted two sitters but four wanted to go, so lisa agreed as long as she didn't have to pay any of them -- sweet deal). the babysitters and kids start to notice creepy things going on in the mansion and hear tell of ghosts that may reside there. I will go into more detail below, divided by character(s).
claudia and georgio: framing device is that she's failing english and needs to write about her summer to retroactively pass.
she meets the mansion's previous caretakers' grandson, georgio, and falls for him. he is 19 and in college, and he assumes claud is 16 (which isn't anywhere as creepy as 19 and 13, but still -- 19 years olds shouldn't be dating 16 year olds either). he seems a little dangerous and mysteriously keeps telling the babysitters not to go to the attic because it might not be safe (but the baby sitters think he is hiding something up there and is the "ghost" in the mansion). meanwhile, claud convinces the babysitters and kids to participate in the founders day parade, dressing up in old dresses found in the attic and riding on a float made to look like the mansion's widow's walk.
kristy and jason: jason is one of the menderses, and he really wants to play softball with the townie boys but they don't have a coach. kristy helps facilitate their softball team, but they still need a coach after she leaves (see lionel for more).
lionel: the menderses' eldest, a 14 year old thespian wannabe. georgio introduces him to some of the summer stock theatre folks, and he ends up coaching his little brother jason's softball team.
dawn and jill: jill, the menderses' second oldest, wants to be a teenager really badly and does everything she can to look and act just like dawn. dawn eventually convinces her that she can be a mini-babysitter by helping look out for her sister martha, so she joins the swim team with her.
karen and martha: martha is the youngest menders kid, and she is super shy. karen wants to help her make friends but karen is THE WORST and is constantly going up to strangers and trying to convince them to be friends with martha. WORST approach. eventually, martha ends up joining the swim team with jill.
andrew: is really obsessed with frogs, toads, and boats. it's actually kind of adorable.
mary anne: does some of the historical-type investigation of the house. all things considered it's not a very mary anne-heavy book, though (which may be one of the reasons I love it so much).
mal and jessi: left behind in stoneybrook, it is up to them to take care of the bsc. when clients stop calling they think it's because they are doing a bad job, but really the clients are all just going out of town for early summer trips.
anyway, in the end, it turns out that the "ghosts" are the new caretakers, the coopers. elton cooper was really charles randolph, mr. menders's cousin who would receive the mansion if the menderses decided not to take it.
highlights:
-jill the idiot who loves dawn and constantly tries to look like her, when introducing herself, lists that one of her likes is teenagers. HOW DESPERATE ARE YOU? at one point when dawn goes to swim jill actually says, "I want to do whatever the teenagers do."
-lionel at one point is walking away from the bsc, mumbling to himself about "hysterical females"
-one night they have a dinner party, where they polish the silver and light candles and wear fancy clothes. it's very cute. I love these kinds of plotlines (see Claudia and Crazy Peaches)
-they find a note of all the horrible things the coopers are going to do to the menderses after the bsc members leave. seriously. the coopers wrote their evil plan on a notepad. I guess this should maybe be under lowlights because it's so preposterous, but I just find it hilarious.
-kristy: "these guys needed a leader so badly they couldn't pull it together to turn me down -- even though I'm a girl and they were the kind of boys who'd ordinarily have trouble with that." okay kristy, you won me back.
-mal and jessi plotline is SO GOOD. they are adorable. they take turns acting as president, and it's like they're playing house.
-claud does a face-painting booth at the swim team fundraiser, and jill is "a teenager" (no idea what that means but lol)
-dumbwaiter discovery: dawn decides to investigate the hidden dumbwaiter and gets stuck in it (seriously this part is really wild and kind of creepy). she hears the supposedly mute margaret cooper speak!
-mary anne does research at the historical society into the mansion's history and finds out someone with a thick accent is doing the same research. later when she finds out margaret has an accent it becomes apparent that both know the other is doing research and margaret knows that mary anne knows she can speak. and they are still stuck staying in a house with the coopers!
-when the uncle who left the mansion to the menderses was on his deathbed he was asking for his treasure in the attic. it turns out that he must have been talking about a toy boat which has the word treasure written on the side. I think it's like this, except with the word treasure:
-an andrew-narrated chapter where the babysitters are trying to find the person who speaks with the accent (mentioned by the historical society lady) but andrew is confused about why the babysitters keep talking to women who sound like mary poppins. he asks why people talk funny and the response he gets, that people come to this country with their accents, prompts this thought: "when I go on a trip I take a suitcase."
-once the coopers/the randolphs realize they're found out, they flee, leaving this note: "the house--and its ghosts--are yours. C.R."
-in general, I really dig that there is a 14-year-old boy at the house and NONE of the babysitters have any romantic interest in him. in fact the only romance in this book is known to be off-limits: claudia knows that it's wrong for her to lead georgio on, and she ends up telling the truth about her age at the end.
lowlights/nitpicks:
-kristy is the worst. claud, mary anne, and dawn all get permission to go on the trip but lisa had only asked for 2 sitters, so kristy says, "I'm the president. There wouldn't be a Baby-sitters Club without me."
-the mansion is so huge that there is a floor that isn't getting used and ONE wing of ONE floor has the eight rooms that all the bsc and kids use. how many rooms are in this place? I guess it could be true but it just seems preposterous to me. it's like a freakin' hotel.
-spooky the black cat who lives in the mansion jumps out at the bsc and hisses, but then immediately is fine with jill picking him up. huh? cats aren't like that.
-shannon is SUCH a jerk in this book. she walks in 15 minutes late to a bsc meeting, and then condescendingly says, "next time let's try to end on time." maybe they could've if you'd arrived on time!
-a reference to jessi having a sitting job at the mancusis, but they don't have kids (they are the pet-filled house from Jessi Ramsey, Pet-sitter)
-a reference to the "late summer afternoon" but it's only been a couple weeks since school ended
-they keep being startled by spooky the cat but keep not closing their bedroom doors. CLOSE YOUR DOORS YOU IDIOTS
-mal and jessi keep acting like they're the reason the bsc is falling apart, but really it's not their fault. it's the fault of the 4 selfish assholes who went to maine and stuck them with all the work
-a reference to jessi having to babysit the braddocks at the celebrate america parade but then a reference to the braddocks being about to go out of town for a two week camping trip. huh?
-the fact that this book and Mary Anne and Camp BSC take place at the same time but can't possibly. how could the babysitters host camp so soon after school ends, but also go on this two week right after school ends?
claud outfits:
-"She had on a pair of bright blue Lycra biker shorts, a black lacy tank top, a man's white dress shirt, baggy purple and white checked socks, red high-tops, and a pair of big gold hoop earrings with a brightly colored wooden parrot perched on each hoop."
-"I decided to wear my floral-print mini-sundress (the pink and red flower pattern is big and sort of abstract). To that I added a pink baseball cap, dangling yellow glass earrings, and my red high-top sneakers."
-"...Claud looking amazing in a full-length black gauze skirt over a black leotard. She was wearing dangling glass earrings that she'd made from an old chandelier. Her long black hair was held back on one side with a single red rose."
-"I put on my black gauze skirt and a red tank top, and tied my white silk bomber jacket around my waist. Then I put on my airplane earrings."
lionel outfits:
-"I noticed that Lionel was wearing white linen pants and a beige short-sleeved shirt."
-'A few minutes later Lionel appeared before us in cutoff jeans, a T-shirt that read "Boston Red Sox," and a baseball cap turned sideways.'
snacks in claudia's room:
-twinkies (n.s.)
-rice cakes under her bed
-nacho-flavored cheese twists (n.s.)
-tootsie rolls under her mattress
-chuckle rings under her bed
-blue corn chips
claudia and georgio: framing device is that she's failing english and needs to write about her summer to retroactively pass.
she meets the mansion's previous caretakers' grandson, georgio, and falls for him. he is 19 and in college, and he assumes claud is 16 (which isn't anywhere as creepy as 19 and 13, but still -- 19 years olds shouldn't be dating 16 year olds either). he seems a little dangerous and mysteriously keeps telling the babysitters not to go to the attic because it might not be safe (but the baby sitters think he is hiding something up there and is the "ghost" in the mansion). meanwhile, claud convinces the babysitters and kids to participate in the founders day parade, dressing up in old dresses found in the attic and riding on a float made to look like the mansion's widow's walk.
kristy and jason: jason is one of the menderses, and he really wants to play softball with the townie boys but they don't have a coach. kristy helps facilitate their softball team, but they still need a coach after she leaves (see lionel for more).
lionel: the menderses' eldest, a 14 year old thespian wannabe. georgio introduces him to some of the summer stock theatre folks, and he ends up coaching his little brother jason's softball team.
dawn and jill: jill, the menderses' second oldest, wants to be a teenager really badly and does everything she can to look and act just like dawn. dawn eventually convinces her that she can be a mini-babysitter by helping look out for her sister martha, so she joins the swim team with her.
karen and martha: martha is the youngest menders kid, and she is super shy. karen wants to help her make friends but karen is THE WORST and is constantly going up to strangers and trying to convince them to be friends with martha. WORST approach. eventually, martha ends up joining the swim team with jill.
andrew: is really obsessed with frogs, toads, and boats. it's actually kind of adorable.
mary anne: does some of the historical-type investigation of the house. all things considered it's not a very mary anne-heavy book, though (which may be one of the reasons I love it so much).
mal and jessi: left behind in stoneybrook, it is up to them to take care of the bsc. when clients stop calling they think it's because they are doing a bad job, but really the clients are all just going out of town for early summer trips.
anyway, in the end, it turns out that the "ghosts" are the new caretakers, the coopers. elton cooper was really charles randolph, mr. menders's cousin who would receive the mansion if the menderses decided not to take it.
highlights:
-jill the idiot who loves dawn and constantly tries to look like her, when introducing herself, lists that one of her likes is teenagers. HOW DESPERATE ARE YOU? at one point when dawn goes to swim jill actually says, "I want to do whatever the teenagers do."
-lionel at one point is walking away from the bsc, mumbling to himself about "hysterical females"
-one night they have a dinner party, where they polish the silver and light candles and wear fancy clothes. it's very cute. I love these kinds of plotlines (see Claudia and Crazy Peaches)
-they find a note of all the horrible things the coopers are going to do to the menderses after the bsc members leave. seriously. the coopers wrote their evil plan on a notepad. I guess this should maybe be under lowlights because it's so preposterous, but I just find it hilarious.
-kristy: "these guys needed a leader so badly they couldn't pull it together to turn me down -- even though I'm a girl and they were the kind of boys who'd ordinarily have trouble with that." okay kristy, you won me back.
-mal and jessi plotline is SO GOOD. they are adorable. they take turns acting as president, and it's like they're playing house.
-claud does a face-painting booth at the swim team fundraiser, and jill is "a teenager" (no idea what that means but lol)
-dumbwaiter discovery: dawn decides to investigate the hidden dumbwaiter and gets stuck in it (seriously this part is really wild and kind of creepy). she hears the supposedly mute margaret cooper speak!
-mary anne does research at the historical society into the mansion's history and finds out someone with a thick accent is doing the same research. later when she finds out margaret has an accent it becomes apparent that both know the other is doing research and margaret knows that mary anne knows she can speak. and they are still stuck staying in a house with the coopers!
-when the uncle who left the mansion to the menderses was on his deathbed he was asking for his treasure in the attic. it turns out that he must have been talking about a toy boat which has the word treasure written on the side. I think it's like this, except with the word treasure:
-an andrew-narrated chapter where the babysitters are trying to find the person who speaks with the accent (mentioned by the historical society lady) but andrew is confused about why the babysitters keep talking to women who sound like mary poppins. he asks why people talk funny and the response he gets, that people come to this country with their accents, prompts this thought: "when I go on a trip I take a suitcase."
-once the coopers/the randolphs realize they're found out, they flee, leaving this note: "the house--and its ghosts--are yours. C.R."
-in general, I really dig that there is a 14-year-old boy at the house and NONE of the babysitters have any romantic interest in him. in fact the only romance in this book is known to be off-limits: claudia knows that it's wrong for her to lead georgio on, and she ends up telling the truth about her age at the end.
lowlights/nitpicks:
-kristy is the worst. claud, mary anne, and dawn all get permission to go on the trip but lisa had only asked for 2 sitters, so kristy says, "I'm the president. There wouldn't be a Baby-sitters Club without me."
-the mansion is so huge that there is a floor that isn't getting used and ONE wing of ONE floor has the eight rooms that all the bsc and kids use. how many rooms are in this place? I guess it could be true but it just seems preposterous to me. it's like a freakin' hotel.
-spooky the black cat who lives in the mansion jumps out at the bsc and hisses, but then immediately is fine with jill picking him up. huh? cats aren't like that.
-shannon is SUCH a jerk in this book. she walks in 15 minutes late to a bsc meeting, and then condescendingly says, "next time let's try to end on time." maybe they could've if you'd arrived on time!
-a reference to jessi having a sitting job at the mancusis, but they don't have kids (they are the pet-filled house from Jessi Ramsey, Pet-sitter)
-a reference to the "late summer afternoon" but it's only been a couple weeks since school ended
-they keep being startled by spooky the cat but keep not closing their bedroom doors. CLOSE YOUR DOORS YOU IDIOTS
-mal and jessi keep acting like they're the reason the bsc is falling apart, but really it's not their fault. it's the fault of the 4 selfish assholes who went to maine and stuck them with all the work
-a reference to jessi having to babysit the braddocks at the celebrate america parade but then a reference to the braddocks being about to go out of town for a two week camping trip. huh?
-the fact that this book and Mary Anne and Camp BSC take place at the same time but can't possibly. how could the babysitters host camp so soon after school ends, but also go on this two week right after school ends?
claud outfits:
-"She had on a pair of bright blue Lycra biker shorts, a black lacy tank top, a man's white dress shirt, baggy purple and white checked socks, red high-tops, and a pair of big gold hoop earrings with a brightly colored wooden parrot perched on each hoop."
-"I decided to wear my floral-print mini-sundress (the pink and red flower pattern is big and sort of abstract). To that I added a pink baseball cap, dangling yellow glass earrings, and my red high-top sneakers."
-"...Claud looking amazing in a full-length black gauze skirt over a black leotard. She was wearing dangling glass earrings that she'd made from an old chandelier. Her long black hair was held back on one side with a single red rose."
-"I put on my black gauze skirt and a red tank top, and tied my white silk bomber jacket around my waist. Then I put on my airplane earrings."
lionel outfits:
-"I noticed that Lionel was wearing white linen pants and a beige short-sleeved shirt."
-'A few minutes later Lionel appeared before us in cutoff jeans, a T-shirt that read "Boston Red Sox," and a baseball cap turned sideways.'
snacks in claudia's room:
-twinkies (n.s.)
-rice cakes under her bed
-nacho-flavored cheese twists (n.s.)
-tootsie rolls under her mattress
-chuckle rings under her bed
-blue corn chips
November 30, 2024
1) Karen Brewer, you insane bitch, I love you so much.
2) GIORGIO YOU ARE WAY TOO OLD FOR THAT CHILD YOU STOP IT RIGHT NOW YOU PREDATOR. RUN, CLAUDIA, RUN!!!!!
3) Jessi and Mal are hilariously dramatic. They are soooooo eleven years old and it's perfection.
2) GIORGIO YOU ARE WAY TOO OLD FOR THAT CHILD YOU STOP IT RIGHT NOW YOU PREDATOR. RUN, CLAUDIA, RUN!!!!!
3) Jessi and Mal are hilariously dramatic. They are soooooo eleven years old and it's perfection.
March 24, 2011
i got my copy of this book from some babysitters club trading website, & the person who gave it to me did not mention that it was the british edition. i have been dreading the process of mucking my way through british slang. nothing against any brits that may be reading this. i just find babysitters club books weird enough without having to contend with a version that repeatedly uses terms like "chairman," "a coffee," & "you lot". it was super distracting.
so, the plot is that claudia has signed on for two-week regular babysitting job looking after karen & andrew. the prospect of such horrors is so depressing that claudia kills herself & the club has to carry on holding meetings in what is now a haunted house. just kidding. claudia takes the job, but lisa calls back to the next day to explain that she, seth, & the kids have been invited to join some friends (the menders family) for a two-week vacation at a mansion in a small town in maine. the menderseses have apparently inherited the mansion & are spending two weeks living in it to decide if they would like to to keep it or not. they just invited lisa, seth, & the kids along as a pathetic plot development that will enable some babysitters to go along on the trip. the menderseseses have four kids (though only two or three of babysitter-needing age) so lisa asks for two sitters to come along on the trip & help wrangle the children.
of course, a scuffle ensues. all the 13-year-old sitters want to go. (mallory & jessi know their parents will never permit them.) claudia thinks she's a shoo-in because she already signed up for the karen & andrew job. kristy thinks she should go because karen & andrew are her stepsiblings. mary anne thinks she should get to go because she loves charming tourist-friendly new england towns, as everyone well knows. dawn thinks she should get to go because there might be a ghost & everyone knows she likes ghosts. actually, i don't know why mary anne & dawn think they should get to go. anyway, they all secure parental permission & tell lisa that they all would like to go. she laughs & says that they can all come along, but they're not getting paid for all the babysitting they will provide. it was kind of refreshing for a parent to be like, "really, you want a free vacation? okay, but you're babysitting around the clock & i'm not paying you."
the four of them leave mallory & jessi to hold down the fort in stoneybrook. there's a lot of crap about mallory & jessi taking turns being "chairman," while the other is acting "vice-chairman". shannon & logan pass their schedules on so that mallory & jessi can do their best at setting up jobs, but shannon kind of bosses them around a little & logan is taking lots of shifts at the rosebud cafe & specifically forbids them to call him or visit him there for club business. naturally they sign him up for a job & then forget to tell him & mallory has to bother him at work to make sure he knows about the job. he almost gets in trouble with his boss & has to shuffle around his schedule a little to fit the job in. then he starts cold shouldering mallory, which seems unnecessary to me. it's not like she was doing anything all that unreasonable, under the circumstances.
jessi & mallory have to turn away some jobs because they are too busy & parents are not happy. they notice that they are getting fewer calls soon after. they contemplate the fact that they may have destroyed the club while the older sitters were gone for two weeks. they do much commiserating over "humbugs" (what the fuck? do they mean peppermints?) & "fruit gums" (huh? are those like gumdrops?). there is even a whole long scene in which fruit gums play a metaphorical role. what the fuck is a fruit gum? damn you, british edition of the babysitters club! anyway, they eventually realize that it's just vacation season (or "holiday season," as the book repeatedly phrases it, because british people don't go on vacation, they go on holiday) & people don't need sitters because they are out of town. crisis averted.
meanwhile, in maine...the babysitters meet the menderseseseses. lionel is 14 & he wants to be an actor. jill is 10 & she wants to be a teenager. she immediately latches on to dawn & wants to do everything dawn does. jason is 8 & he just wants to hang out with boys & play sports. martha is 7 & she is very shy. she would like nothing better than for karen brewer to leave her the hell alone. there are also caretakers that come with the mansion. mr. & mrs. cooper claim that they worked for the elderly mr. randolph, who left the mansion to the menderseseseseseses. they do all the cooking & cleaning & all that good stuff. interestingly, mrs. cooper is mute. there is also a young gardener named georgio. his grandparents used to be the estate gardeners but now he takes care of business. he becomes smitten with claudia, despite the fact that she is 13 & he is 19 (!!!). he assumes she is 16 & she does not correct him. can i just say that there is a huge difference between a 13-year-old & a 16-year-old? & an even huger difference between a 13-year-old & a 19-year-old? over the course of the book, we learn that georgio is a talented & hardworking gardener, as well as a college student & a volunteer firefighter. he owns his own truck & is close to his elderly grandparents. he even invites claudia over to have tea with them (i don't think that was a britishism; i think the babysitters club series would just have us believe that old people of all nationalities love tea). basically, it sounds like georgio is a rather uncommonly mature 19-year-old. how the fuck does he fail to realize that claudia is 13 years old? also, i remember being 13 & thinking that it would be cool if a 19-year-old hottie fell in love with me at first sight, but now that 19 is well beyond the purview of my rearview, i can say with confidence that a 19-year-old being into a 13-year-old is just gross.
moving on to the actual story. basically, the babysitters think the mansion is haunted. mr. cooper tells them some creepy ghost stories about the place, they see weird flickering candlelight & hear screams in the hallway at night, they see lights on the locked third floor come on when no one is up there, & they even see a mysterious woman in white walking on the widow's walk. (one of the stories mr. cooper told involved a former randolph resident being thrown from the widow's walk & killed during a storm.) the babysitters rather quickly decide that the house isn't REALLY haunted. they think someone is trying to scare them. but who? & why?
they consider lionel after they catch him with a candle, making scary noises in the hallway. but he denies having a hand in everything else going on. after claudia sees some candles in georgio's gardening shed, she starts to suspect him...even though she likes him. the babysitters pretty much decide that georgio is the culprit until they are checking out the dumbwaiter one day. dawn gets closed into the dumbwaiter when the coopers come home unexpectedly, & she hears mrs. cooper speak. the babysitters also learn that a mysterious woman with an accent has been researching the mansion at the local library. dawn says that mrs. cooper has an accent. they trick lionel into doing some accents for them, & dawn specifies that mrs. cooper has a scottish accent. the babysitters then learn that the menderseseses will only inherit the house if they agree to live in it full-time. otherwise the house will go to mr. cooper's cousin, who lives in scotland. the babysitters realize that this cousin is in fact mr. cooper, that they made up the story about mrs. cooper being mute so no one would hear her accent, & that they have been pretending to haunt the house in order to scare the menderseseseses away & keep the house for themselves. the babysitters sneak into the coopers' room & find a detailed list of haunting ideas, which includes some fucked up shit, like starting a fire in one of the kids' rooms & putting poison ivy oil on their clothes.
of course they figure this all out while lisa, seth, & mr. & mrs. menders are out of town for the day. & then a storm blows in so they can't come home. the kids & the babysitters are stuck alone with the coopers. georgio does his best to protect them (the babysitters realize he's on their side when they find the list, which includes a plot to get georgio fired). when the adults finally arrive home in the morning, the babysitters tell them what they know. the menderseseseses go to confront the coopers, but apparently the coopers guessed what was going on & fled the country. mr. menders goes to the police, but learns that the coopers didn't actually do anything illegal--they didn't actually set any fires or anything. so there's nothing to be done unless the coopers bother them again.
meanwhile, the babysitters have helped all the kids adjust to life in small town maine. lionel found a community theatre at which to volunteer, & he'll also coach a softball team for jason & some local boys. jill joins the swim team with martha, & martha makes friends on her own, without any of karen's meddling. there's way too much karen in this book. she has her own chapters & everything. she says shit like, "being a good friend means doing what you think is right for someone even if they say they don't want it." karen is literally a sociopath. the kids decide they're cool with moving to maine full-time & the menderseseseseses take the house. georgio writes to claudia & invites her to his college homecoming dance. she writes back & admits she's only 13 & would feel weird at a college dance. no word on how exactly georgio committed suicide when he found out the girl he'd been romancing all summer was in junior high.
i probably would have given this book on more star if i hadn't been so distracted by all the talk of "fruit gums" & "holiday".
so, the plot is that claudia has signed on for two-week regular babysitting job looking after karen & andrew. the prospect of such horrors is so depressing that claudia kills herself & the club has to carry on holding meetings in what is now a haunted house. just kidding. claudia takes the job, but lisa calls back to the next day to explain that she, seth, & the kids have been invited to join some friends (the menders family) for a two-week vacation at a mansion in a small town in maine. the menderseses have apparently inherited the mansion & are spending two weeks living in it to decide if they would like to to keep it or not. they just invited lisa, seth, & the kids along as a pathetic plot development that will enable some babysitters to go along on the trip. the menderseseses have four kids (though only two or three of babysitter-needing age) so lisa asks for two sitters to come along on the trip & help wrangle the children.
of course, a scuffle ensues. all the 13-year-old sitters want to go. (mallory & jessi know their parents will never permit them.) claudia thinks she's a shoo-in because she already signed up for the karen & andrew job. kristy thinks she should go because karen & andrew are her stepsiblings. mary anne thinks she should get to go because she loves charming tourist-friendly new england towns, as everyone well knows. dawn thinks she should get to go because there might be a ghost & everyone knows she likes ghosts. actually, i don't know why mary anne & dawn think they should get to go. anyway, they all secure parental permission & tell lisa that they all would like to go. she laughs & says that they can all come along, but they're not getting paid for all the babysitting they will provide. it was kind of refreshing for a parent to be like, "really, you want a free vacation? okay, but you're babysitting around the clock & i'm not paying you."
the four of them leave mallory & jessi to hold down the fort in stoneybrook. there's a lot of crap about mallory & jessi taking turns being "chairman," while the other is acting "vice-chairman". shannon & logan pass their schedules on so that mallory & jessi can do their best at setting up jobs, but shannon kind of bosses them around a little & logan is taking lots of shifts at the rosebud cafe & specifically forbids them to call him or visit him there for club business. naturally they sign him up for a job & then forget to tell him & mallory has to bother him at work to make sure he knows about the job. he almost gets in trouble with his boss & has to shuffle around his schedule a little to fit the job in. then he starts cold shouldering mallory, which seems unnecessary to me. it's not like she was doing anything all that unreasonable, under the circumstances.
jessi & mallory have to turn away some jobs because they are too busy & parents are not happy. they notice that they are getting fewer calls soon after. they contemplate the fact that they may have destroyed the club while the older sitters were gone for two weeks. they do much commiserating over "humbugs" (what the fuck? do they mean peppermints?) & "fruit gums" (huh? are those like gumdrops?). there is even a whole long scene in which fruit gums play a metaphorical role. what the fuck is a fruit gum? damn you, british edition of the babysitters club! anyway, they eventually realize that it's just vacation season (or "holiday season," as the book repeatedly phrases it, because british people don't go on vacation, they go on holiday) & people don't need sitters because they are out of town. crisis averted.
meanwhile, in maine...the babysitters meet the menderseseseses. lionel is 14 & he wants to be an actor. jill is 10 & she wants to be a teenager. she immediately latches on to dawn & wants to do everything dawn does. jason is 8 & he just wants to hang out with boys & play sports. martha is 7 & she is very shy. she would like nothing better than for karen brewer to leave her the hell alone. there are also caretakers that come with the mansion. mr. & mrs. cooper claim that they worked for the elderly mr. randolph, who left the mansion to the menderseseseseseses. they do all the cooking & cleaning & all that good stuff. interestingly, mrs. cooper is mute. there is also a young gardener named georgio. his grandparents used to be the estate gardeners but now he takes care of business. he becomes smitten with claudia, despite the fact that she is 13 & he is 19 (!!!). he assumes she is 16 & she does not correct him. can i just say that there is a huge difference between a 13-year-old & a 16-year-old? & an even huger difference between a 13-year-old & a 19-year-old? over the course of the book, we learn that georgio is a talented & hardworking gardener, as well as a college student & a volunteer firefighter. he owns his own truck & is close to his elderly grandparents. he even invites claudia over to have tea with them (i don't think that was a britishism; i think the babysitters club series would just have us believe that old people of all nationalities love tea). basically, it sounds like georgio is a rather uncommonly mature 19-year-old. how the fuck does he fail to realize that claudia is 13 years old? also, i remember being 13 & thinking that it would be cool if a 19-year-old hottie fell in love with me at first sight, but now that 19 is well beyond the purview of my rearview, i can say with confidence that a 19-year-old being into a 13-year-old is just gross.
moving on to the actual story. basically, the babysitters think the mansion is haunted. mr. cooper tells them some creepy ghost stories about the place, they see weird flickering candlelight & hear screams in the hallway at night, they see lights on the locked third floor come on when no one is up there, & they even see a mysterious woman in white walking on the widow's walk. (one of the stories mr. cooper told involved a former randolph resident being thrown from the widow's walk & killed during a storm.) the babysitters rather quickly decide that the house isn't REALLY haunted. they think someone is trying to scare them. but who? & why?
they consider lionel after they catch him with a candle, making scary noises in the hallway. but he denies having a hand in everything else going on. after claudia sees some candles in georgio's gardening shed, she starts to suspect him...even though she likes him. the babysitters pretty much decide that georgio is the culprit until they are checking out the dumbwaiter one day. dawn gets closed into the dumbwaiter when the coopers come home unexpectedly, & she hears mrs. cooper speak. the babysitters also learn that a mysterious woman with an accent has been researching the mansion at the local library. dawn says that mrs. cooper has an accent. they trick lionel into doing some accents for them, & dawn specifies that mrs. cooper has a scottish accent. the babysitters then learn that the menderseseses will only inherit the house if they agree to live in it full-time. otherwise the house will go to mr. cooper's cousin, who lives in scotland. the babysitters realize that this cousin is in fact mr. cooper, that they made up the story about mrs. cooper being mute so no one would hear her accent, & that they have been pretending to haunt the house in order to scare the menderseseseses away & keep the house for themselves. the babysitters sneak into the coopers' room & find a detailed list of haunting ideas, which includes some fucked up shit, like starting a fire in one of the kids' rooms & putting poison ivy oil on their clothes.
of course they figure this all out while lisa, seth, & mr. & mrs. menders are out of town for the day. & then a storm blows in so they can't come home. the kids & the babysitters are stuck alone with the coopers. georgio does his best to protect them (the babysitters realize he's on their side when they find the list, which includes a plot to get georgio fired). when the adults finally arrive home in the morning, the babysitters tell them what they know. the menderseseseses go to confront the coopers, but apparently the coopers guessed what was going on & fled the country. mr. menders goes to the police, but learns that the coopers didn't actually do anything illegal--they didn't actually set any fires or anything. so there's nothing to be done unless the coopers bother them again.
meanwhile, the babysitters have helped all the kids adjust to life in small town maine. lionel found a community theatre at which to volunteer, & he'll also coach a softball team for jason & some local boys. jill joins the swim team with martha, & martha makes friends on her own, without any of karen's meddling. there's way too much karen in this book. she has her own chapters & everything. she says shit like, "being a good friend means doing what you think is right for someone even if they say they don't want it." karen is literally a sociopath. the kids decide they're cool with moving to maine full-time & the menderseseseseses take the house. georgio writes to claudia & invites her to his college homecoming dance. she writes back & admits she's only 13 & would feel weird at a college dance. no word on how exactly georgio committed suicide when he found out the girl he'd been romancing all summer was in junior high.
i probably would have given this book on more star if i hadn't been so distracted by all the talk of "fruit gums" & "holiday".
October 23, 2024
3.5 stars. This is our first year to incorporate BSC books into our nostalgia re-readathon, and this one was my pick. I remember that it held up pretty well to re-reads, and that was my experience again this time. IIRC, Jeanne Betancourt wrote quite a few of the Mystery line, so it was great to have a strong ghostie for the first Super Mystery.
Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne, and Dawn finagle a two-week trip to Reese, Maine to baby-sit for Karen and Andrew and family friends of theirs, the Menders. (This is mid-late canon, while Stacey was estranged from the club during the "Bad Girls" saga.) The Menders have inherited a huge mansion in the seaside town, but can only have it if they agree to live there full time. Seth and Lisa, Karen and Andrew's parents, are along to assist them with setting up their family business. Only two of the Menders kids fall into the category of baby-sitting charges, but the parents decide that bringing along 4 teenage girls is worth not having to pay them for the job. I'm a little surprised Kristy went for this, especially considering she was giving such a big push to the club to gobble up the early summer baby-sitting jobs in Stoneybrook, but I guess a two-week trip to coastal Maine was worth it, even to her.
The group arrives to find a caretaker couple, the Coopers, already in place. The Menders kids are extremely resistant to moving to small-town Reese from Boston, and the BSC is charged with assisting them to acclimate. The kids get a say in whether the family will move, and it will be so much easier if they agree!
As for the Menders:
[+] one of the kids, Jill, immediately glues herself to Dawn's side
[+] Lionel, the oldest, is so busy trying to become ~an actor~ that he basically spends his time annoying everybody
[+] Jason is a bit reticent but willing to make friends with the locals
[+] Martha, the youngest and painfully shy, has the worst fate of them all: Karen Brewer has decided to make it her life's mission to make Martha the Most Popular New Kid in Reese
(Poor Martha, seriously. Karen is completely obnoxious AND gets her own narration chapter *shudder*)
From the first night of the group's arrival, spooky things are happening in the house. First, it's just a flickering candle in the hallway at night, but things ramp up with a light blinks on and off on the fourth floor (the door to which is firmly locked), noises are heard in the walls, and a ghostly apparition appears on the widow's walk. Combined with the stories told to the group by the Coopers about the tragic fates of the various Randolph family members, everyone is thoroughly creeped out.
Lionel fesses up fairly quickly to being the candle-wielder in the hallway, but the rest is still a mystery. The girls decide to play detective, and have firmly in their sights the former caretakers' grandson, Giorgio, a handsome 18-year-old who shows immediate interest in Claudia. Actually, he kinda creeps on all of them, but most of the overtures are definitely aimed at Claud. He thinks she's sixteen, and she doesn't correct him, but still. I know Claud is supposed to be sophisticated and all, but up close, youth will tell. So Giorgio, who seems to be following them around and warns them not to go to the fourth floor of the mansion, seems like a good suspect for the 'hauntings.'
The BSC splits their time between caring for their charges and trying to help the Menders find footing in Reese, and trying to solve the mystery of the mansion. It's all fairly believable (even Claudia drawing mustaches on photocopies of the Randolph family ancestors), but also kinda obvious who the culprit is. I hate that the adults are all completely clueless until the BSC clues them in with all the evidence they collect. And the villains more or less get away with it.
In the suplot, Mallory and Jessi are running the club in the older girls' absence, and fear they have ruined everything when they botch up some baby-sitting appointments and have to turn away jobs due to lack of sitters. Soon, none of their usual clients are calling. Oh noes! But considering it's summer vacation, it's no big surprise that the calls have trickled to a stop because everyone's going on vacation. The two manage to convince Janine to take a night job, and the chapter that Logan narrates when Mallory runs him down at the Rosebud Cafe in order to make sure he arrives on time for a baby-sitting job that he didn't even know he had is pretty funny.
The subplot wraps up with Mal and Jessi gathering up about 15 regular clients and putting them in the "Celebrate America" parade. They decided to do a little BSC advertising (guilty consciousness for turning down jobs?), so got the charges to decorate their bikes and skateboards in patriotic colors. They convince Sam Thomas, riding a unicycle, to carry their sign "BSC on Wheels" at the front, and a thank you sign at the end. So, all's well that ends well in Stoneybrook, too.
So, I knocked off a star for being Stacey-less, and for having a Karen-narrated chapter (I just cannot with her). I was also a bit surprised at how badly Andrew was written. He had an extremely short narrative chapter as well, and I would've pegged him to be about 2 instead of 4. Though I suppose growing up with an older sister like Karen means you wouldn't get too many words in edgewise, LOL.
Hopefully we will have more BSC books in future nostalgia re-readathons. It was an especially nice palate cleanser after the last book of WTFery!
Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne, and Dawn finagle a two-week trip to Reese, Maine to baby-sit for Karen and Andrew and family friends of theirs, the Menders. (This is mid-late canon, while Stacey was estranged from the club during the "Bad Girls" saga.) The Menders have inherited a huge mansion in the seaside town, but can only have it if they agree to live there full time. Seth and Lisa, Karen and Andrew's parents, are along to assist them with setting up their family business. Only two of the Menders kids fall into the category of baby-sitting charges, but the parents decide that bringing along 4 teenage girls is worth not having to pay them for the job. I'm a little surprised Kristy went for this, especially considering she was giving such a big push to the club to gobble up the early summer baby-sitting jobs in Stoneybrook, but I guess a two-week trip to coastal Maine was worth it, even to her.
The group arrives to find a caretaker couple, the Coopers, already in place. The Menders kids are extremely resistant to moving to small-town Reese from Boston, and the BSC is charged with assisting them to acclimate. The kids get a say in whether the family will move, and it will be so much easier if they agree!
As for the Menders:
[+] one of the kids, Jill, immediately glues herself to Dawn's side
[+] Lionel, the oldest, is so busy trying to become ~an actor~ that he basically spends his time annoying everybody
[+] Jason is a bit reticent but willing to make friends with the locals
[+] Martha, the youngest and painfully shy, has the worst fate of them all: Karen Brewer has decided to make it her life's mission to make Martha the Most Popular New Kid in Reese
(Poor Martha, seriously. Karen is completely obnoxious AND gets her own narration chapter *shudder*)
From the first night of the group's arrival, spooky things are happening in the house. First, it's just a flickering candle in the hallway at night, but things ramp up with a light blinks on and off on the fourth floor (the door to which is firmly locked), noises are heard in the walls, and a ghostly apparition appears on the widow's walk. Combined with the stories told to the group by the Coopers about the tragic fates of the various Randolph family members, everyone is thoroughly creeped out.
Lionel fesses up fairly quickly to being the candle-wielder in the hallway, but the rest is still a mystery. The girls decide to play detective, and have firmly in their sights the former caretakers' grandson, Giorgio, a handsome 18-year-old who shows immediate interest in Claudia. Actually, he kinda creeps on all of them, but most of the overtures are definitely aimed at Claud. He thinks she's sixteen, and she doesn't correct him, but still. I know Claud is supposed to be sophisticated and all, but up close, youth will tell. So Giorgio, who seems to be following them around and warns them not to go to the fourth floor of the mansion, seems like a good suspect for the 'hauntings.'
The BSC splits their time between caring for their charges and trying to help the Menders find footing in Reese, and trying to solve the mystery of the mansion. It's all fairly believable (even Claudia drawing mustaches on photocopies of the Randolph family ancestors), but also kinda obvious who the culprit is. I hate that the adults are all completely clueless until the BSC clues them in with all the evidence they collect. And the villains more or less get away with it.
In the suplot, Mallory and Jessi are running the club in the older girls' absence, and fear they have ruined everything when they botch up some baby-sitting appointments and have to turn away jobs due to lack of sitters. Soon, none of their usual clients are calling. Oh noes! But considering it's summer vacation, it's no big surprise that the calls have trickled to a stop because everyone's going on vacation. The two manage to convince Janine to take a night job, and the chapter that Logan narrates when Mallory runs him down at the Rosebud Cafe in order to make sure he arrives on time for a baby-sitting job that he didn't even know he had is pretty funny.
The subplot wraps up with Mal and Jessi gathering up about 15 regular clients and putting them in the "Celebrate America" parade. They decided to do a little BSC advertising (guilty consciousness for turning down jobs?), so got the charges to decorate their bikes and skateboards in patriotic colors. They convince Sam Thomas, riding a unicycle, to carry their sign "BSC on Wheels" at the front, and a thank you sign at the end. So, all's well that ends well in Stoneybrook, too.
So, I knocked off a star for being Stacey-less, and for having a Karen-narrated chapter (I just cannot with her). I was also a bit surprised at how badly Andrew was written. He had an extremely short narrative chapter as well, and I would've pegged him to be about 2 instead of 4. Though I suppose growing up with an older sister like Karen means you wouldn't get too many words in edgewise, LOL.
Hopefully we will have more BSC books in future nostalgia re-readathons. It was an especially nice palate cleanser after the last book of WTFery!
July 7, 2020
While I actually started reading around age 3 (thank you, my Granny's Dick and Jane books!), this series is what I remember most about loving to read during my childhood. My sister and I drank these books up like they were oxygen. I truly think we owned just about every single one from every one of the series. We even got the privilege of meeting Ann M. Martin at a book signing, but of course little starstruck me froze and could not speak a word to my biggest hero at that time. Once in awhile if I come across these at a yard sale, I will pick them up for a couple hour trip down memory lane, and I declare nearly nothing centers and relaxes me more!
January 20, 2013
Sometimes I get in these nostalgic moods where I want to go back to reading my childhood favorites. While this is a complete children's book I still find the stories interesting. So if anyone's looking to just read something light with an interesting mystery/storyline pick up one of these books. Ding be ashamed if you're over 25 - the language may be a little immature but the stories still great :)
October 3, 2020
I've never read the mysteries so obviously I'm doing it now, though they are hard to find. This was a decent Scooby-Doo mystery but the whole Claud plot line is yikes yikes yikes.
March 15, 2021
This book was fun and nostalgic, but the super books were never my favorite. This wasn't anything exceptional but it was entertaining and I loved visiting the girls again. In this book, Claudia, Mary Anne, Kristy and Dawn go to Reese, Maine to help care for Karen, Andrew, and 4 kids that are potentially going to live there. Their job is to take care of them as well as help them get used to living in Reese. They get there and its a huge mansion that has some weird things going on and may be haunted. The book is them trying to solve the mystery of the haunted house. Mallory and Jessi are also running the BSC back in Stoneybrook and theres some issues there as clients stop calling. Will they ruin the BSC? I loved the Stoneybrook sections and my heart will always be there! Claudia also has a little romance in Reese that I did not like at all. She's 13 and he was 19 and that was never addressed as not cool. Eek.
SPOILERS AHEAD:
There was no ghost, but the housekeepers/caretakers were trying to scare the family so they wouldn't move there because if they didn't live there full time they wouldn't get the house and the "Coopers" would get some ownership. The reason nobody is calling the BSC is because everyone was on vacation.
SPOILERS AHEAD:
There was no ghost, but the housekeepers/caretakers were trying to scare the family so they wouldn't move there because if they didn't live there full time they wouldn't get the house and the "Coopers" would get some ownership. The reason nobody is calling the BSC is because everyone was on vacation.
January 4, 2019
Most of this book takes place in Maine. Kristy, Dawn, Mary Anne, and Claudia are in Maine with Kristy's stepsiblings and another family as baby-sitters for ten days. These four members of the BSC also solve the only mystery in this book, which involves a shipwreck and a ghost. Also, they go with their charges to the beach, parade, carnival, and marina. Mallory, Jessi, Shannon, and Logan are still in Stoneybrook baby-sitting. Although, Logan is also working as a busboy at the local restaurant. Mallory and Jessi also work in the Celebrate America! parade. Stacey was on the outs with the BSC and spending time with her boyfriend Robert.
February 6, 2023
Well this was just a delightful blast from the past! I found this at my parents house this summer and finally got around to opening it. Also, team Dawn all the way…
March 3, 2016
I used to love The Baby-Sitters Club when I was younger - I wouldn't be able to count the number of those books I had and read. I purchased this kindle book out of nostalgia and I know I hadn't read it before. It was a fun read and definitely took me back to my middle school days! It was a cute story about a few of the baby-sitters taking a job out of town where they stayed at an old mansion. They were convinced the mansion was haunted by all the scary noises they heard at night and the sightings of a woman in a white dress on the widow's walk at night. In the end they solved the mystery, fulfilled their baby-sitting duties and met new friends. Just like I remember!
October 26, 2008
This is by far my most favorite Baby Sitters Club book of the entire series. I have read this book so many times over the years, especially when I was 8-10 years old. My copy is old and torn up, it has dried candle wax on some of the pages, notes, scribbles, everything. I have read all of the BSC books (old school ones at least) and this has always been and always will be my most favorite. There is something about it that just excites me, perhaps it's the possibilities of ghosts plus vacations plus adventure plus amazing friends?
Love this book!
Love this book!
August 21, 2023
I can’t remember the last time I had genuine interest in a super special, so bravo Ann/Jeanne Betancourt. The Maine trip plot was cohesive and actually involved all the girls on the trip for once, and the obligatory Stoneybrook b-plot was genuinely good and not just filler.
Haunted House is by FAR the most egregious example of Stoneybrook parents’ total lack of interest in parenting their children. The BSC’s job is not just to babysit, but to assimilate the Menders kids into this creepy Stephen King town. It’s WILD how little these people have to do with their kids. While they gallivant around New England with Karen and Andrew’s parents, they leave their kids unsupervised in an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar people—two of whom turn out to be criminals and one of whom turns out to be a child predator.
KRISTY: This was a typical but slightly above average Kristy storyline in which she uses the power of sports to help kids fit in.
MARY ANNE: Mary Anne is our expository character who is in charge of finding the historical background on the mansion. It’s honestly probably the most substance she’s ever contributed to one of these books.
DAWN: One of the Menders kids becomes obsessed with Dawn, which we only really see in her POVs. I’m convinced this was nowhere near as extreme as she made it out to be, because Dawn is obsessed with herself and a legend in her own mind.
CLAUDIA: Claudia has an extremely dark POV involving an adult living on the mansion’s grounds becoming obsessed with her, luring her away from the group, and into a dark shed. Of course, Claudia is portrayed as the one who did wrong for leading him on about her age, not the adult man creeping on a babysitter.
JESSI & MALLORY: Jessi and Mallory deal with the fallout of the older, supposedly more responsible sitters all taking off on a vacation and leaving them to provide childcare for all of Stoneybrook. As lazy as the Menders are about parenting, I can’t say much better about the Stoneybrook parents, who leave Jessi and Mallory in charge of all their kids at a community event so they can do whatever they want.
KAREN & ANDREW: Andrew is our obligatory young child POV. Karen is annoying and indulged as ever.
LOGAN: I kind of love when Logan has to reckon with the chaos that is the BSC, and this book was a great example of that.
Haunted House is by FAR the most egregious example of Stoneybrook parents’ total lack of interest in parenting their children. The BSC’s job is not just to babysit, but to assimilate the Menders kids into this creepy Stephen King town. It’s WILD how little these people have to do with their kids. While they gallivant around New England with Karen and Andrew’s parents, they leave their kids unsupervised in an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar people—two of whom turn out to be criminals and one of whom turns out to be a child predator.
KRISTY: This was a typical but slightly above average Kristy storyline in which she uses the power of sports to help kids fit in.
MARY ANNE: Mary Anne is our expository character who is in charge of finding the historical background on the mansion. It’s honestly probably the most substance she’s ever contributed to one of these books.
DAWN: One of the Menders kids becomes obsessed with Dawn, which we only really see in her POVs. I’m convinced this was nowhere near as extreme as she made it out to be, because Dawn is obsessed with herself and a legend in her own mind.
CLAUDIA: Claudia has an extremely dark POV involving an adult living on the mansion’s grounds becoming obsessed with her, luring her away from the group, and into a dark shed. Of course, Claudia is portrayed as the one who did wrong for leading him on about her age, not the adult man creeping on a babysitter.
JESSI & MALLORY: Jessi and Mallory deal with the fallout of the older, supposedly more responsible sitters all taking off on a vacation and leaving them to provide childcare for all of Stoneybrook. As lazy as the Menders are about parenting, I can’t say much better about the Stoneybrook parents, who leave Jessi and Mallory in charge of all their kids at a community event so they can do whatever they want.
KAREN & ANDREW: Andrew is our obligatory young child POV. Karen is annoying and indulged as ever.
LOGAN: I kind of love when Logan has to reckon with the chaos that is the BSC, and this book was a great example of that.
September 17, 2021
Even though I always hate on how shark-jumpy the Mysteries are, I ADORE the Super Mystery series. For one, I adore the Super Special format, a different character narrating every chapter. It's gimmicky, but damn if it isn't fun. And also, the Super Mysteries are actually pretty creepy. I remember the first time I read this book (would have been in the mid aughts,) I was shocked at how actually spooky it was! And even now, despite having read this multiple times, it still delivers. Maybe because it's a longer book, there's more time to develop plot, or maybe having multiple narrators gives it more perspective, but I sincerely wish there were more than four Super Mysteries!!
I also love Mallory and Jessi's subplot and how excited they are to run the BSC, though I'm surprised that Kristy allowed so many BSC members to go away for ten days, considering how many jobs Mal and Jessi had to turn down. And Logan's chapter, and the end of his letter to Mary Anne: "But I love you Mary Anne - even if you do have some goofy friends." Ahahaha, I don't usually love Mallory, but I loved her in this. (Also, Netflix!Mallory seems to be based off of this Mal: hyper and awkward and over the top, and I am here for that.)
I also love Mallory and Jessi's subplot and how excited they are to run the BSC, though I'm surprised that Kristy allowed so many BSC members to go away for ten days, considering how many jobs Mal and Jessi had to turn down. And Logan's chapter, and the end of his letter to Mary Anne: "But I love you Mary Anne - even if you do have some goofy friends." Ahahaha, I don't usually love Mallory, but I loved her in this. (Also, Netflix!Mallory seems to be based off of this Mal: hyper and awkward and over the top, and I am here for that.)
June 6, 2023
I thought the story was cute - although a little long. I liked how there were lots of different voices - even the kids. I am a bit confused on the timeline because this appears to the summer after 8th grade but they are all 13 - don't remember when Claudia's birthday is - maybe I'll figure it out later - I read this one out of order! Anyway, Claudia, Dawn, Kristy and MaryAnn go to a mansion in Maine to babysit for a family with four kids and Karen and Andrew (their mom and stepdad go too), because this family inherited a mansion. You find out later that they have to live their in order to get the house, otherwise it goes to a distant cousin from Scotland. The house appears to be haunted and the girls try to figure out who is behind it. It ends up being the caretakers who are the cousins in disguise. They leave and the family decides to stay. The oldest boy Lionel likes acting, Jill and Martha join the swim team and Jason plays baseball. Jessi and Mal are left to do most of the jobs with Logan and Shannon helping some.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 27, 2025
This was a hands down favorite of mine as a kid. I read it so many times, i still have most of it practically memorized. The gender stuff is super annoying, but it's such a fun spooky summery mystery story. And the New England vibes are spot on. Except can we please stop normalizing the older guy younger girl dynamic? Yeah, the book mentions often that the age gap between Claudia and Georgio is inappropriate, and there can't be a romance between them, but he's NINETEEN and she's THIRTEEN. Come on. And it really bothers me that his name is spelled "Georgio" instead of "Giorgio." Also Jill's obsession with "teenagers" and Dawn kinda doesn't make much sense, considering the ages each of them are. She is only a year younger than Mal and Jessi. I could see her being really into hanging out with the babysitters, but not going on and on about "teenagers" the way she does. Or maybe acting that way could make sense if they actually were about sixteen, and the age difference would make more sense. But that dynamic is weird. Still. I still love reading this book.
July 10, 2017
I didn't read a whole lot of the mysteries as a kid, just a few here and there, and I had never read this one before. I like a good haunted house story though, so naturally this insanity sucked me right in.
The plot is, of course, convoluted. Karen and Andrew's mom and step-father are going to stay for ten days with friends in Maine who just inherited a giant mansion. They want just two sitters to join them, but naturally every BSC member wants to go. So, of course, they're all invited! Except Jesse and Mal, who mus stay behind to be Kristy's long-distance baby-sitting slaves.
In short summary the girls think the mansion is haunted, but in reality a sneaky pair of douchebags are trying to scare the family away and take the mansion for their own. It was like a really bad movie...but I liked it. No shame.
The plot is, of course, convoluted. Karen and Andrew's mom and step-father are going to stay for ten days with friends in Maine who just inherited a giant mansion. They want just two sitters to join them, but naturally every BSC member wants to go. So, of course, they're all invited! Except Jesse and Mal, who mus stay behind to be Kristy's long-distance baby-sitting slaves.
In short summary the girls think the mansion is haunted, but in reality a sneaky pair of douchebags are trying to scare the family away and take the mansion for their own. It was like a really bad movie...but I liked it. No shame.
May 28, 2023
Actually genuinely scary with the danger the Menders family turned out to be in. Well done.
I only wish there was more of a resolution.
I only wish there was more of a resolution.
June 28, 2020
Putting aside how wildly inappropriate it is for a college dude to be hitting on a 13 year old girl(!), and that a bunch of parents are willing to leave all these young children alone in a mansion - this was such a cute read. Compared to the Nancy Drew mysteries I've been rereading, this book was actually refreshingly entertaining with the alternating perspectives and genuine suspense (at least from the perspective of these kids). I thought it was adorable, and it reinforced how fondly I remembered all these BSC books. I'm so glad that it held up better than the horribly dated Nancy Drew ones.
Karen is still the most annoying little brat, though.
Karen is still the most annoying little brat, though.
May 31, 2025
I was feeling nostalgic so I reread this book. I feel like I struggle to remember books I read now, but this one is firmly implanted in my brain. I truly wish I could use my memory and knowledge of various Baby-sitters Club books, plots, characters, etc. to pay off in my current life. Oh well. I will continue to have difficulty remembering what I need to do day-to-day, but at least I can remember all the club members’ parents’ names for no reason!
August 19, 2020
A friend and I are feeling nostalgic and have been wading through all the BSC books we can find on Libby/Overdrive. For the most part, they live up to what I remember of them, except for one thing. All of the guys (except Logan and the one Kristy dates, Bart?) are *far* too old for these middle school girls. The “boy” interested in Claudia in this book is in COLLEGE. She’s THIRTEEN. Barf.
June 24, 2024
The mystery in this one was good, the girls lasted a lot longer in a supposed haunted house than I would’ve. The kids the girls were watching annoyed me. I know they are only thirteen (and fictional), but I thought it was pretty irresponsible for Kristy to let four club members to go on vacation and leave Mallory and Jessi in charge of everything.
January 5, 2025
This wasn’t a favorite BSC story of mine, but I did enjoy it. This apparently takes place while Stacey was on the outs with the rest of the club so I missed her being in it. I also didn’t like AT ALL that the guy who liked Claudia was in COLLEGE. Ew! She’s 13! The mystery was pretty interesting, but overall not one of the better books in the series.
April 2, 2021
I probably should start with the very first BSC, because uff, 3/4 of this book was listing the characters and their many relations. Maybe the characters would be more familiar and interesting if I started from the get-go. Otherwise, it sort of read like the Bible genealogy parts, heh.
January 1, 2022
I don't think I've read any of the Super Mysteries before, and this one definitely had its lame points (especially Claudia and Georgio...ew...and Mallory and Jessi's storyline was useless) but it was so nice after reading a Mary Anne book that I'm willing to ignore a lot.
October 27, 2023
Cute mystery, loved the ghosties, but not my favorite BSC book. Kind of dragged at points, which for a book this short isn't great. Also, the whole thing with Claudia and Georgio was too weird for me.
December 16, 2017
This was one of my absolute favorite books as a child. I could not put it down, yet became sad when I was about to finish it. I read it more than once even though I knew the ending. It is so good!
March 5, 2019
Randomly saw this on the digital library's website. So much fun to go back and read about the BSC!
July 9, 2020
I first read this in 1995 when it first came out, and I was 9. It's my absolute favourite books of the BSC.
July 21, 2020
I still love these. Mystery, intrigue and lots of kids!
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